System and method of providing a high-quality voice network architecture over IP Centrex

ABSTRACT

A system and method are disclosed for providing high quality sound communications in an IP Centrex environment. The method aspect of the invention comprises, from a network switch, negotiating between a first customer premises equipment (CPE) and a second CPE, the negotiation being related to a possible quality of a call between the first CPE and the second CPE. Next, the switch controls mapping between a dialing plan and a network address, determining a network address of the first CPE and the second CPE and connecting the call between the first CPE and the second CPE. In this manner, the highest quality and broadest bandwidth possible between the first CPE and second CPE through the IP Centrex environment may be used for the call.

PRIORITY CLAIM/RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application claims domestic priority to U.S. ProvisionalPatent Application No. 60/516,928 filed Nov. 4, 2003, the contents ofwhich are incorporated herein by reference. The present invention isalso related to Ser. Nos. 10/980,053, 10/980,056, and 10/978,886 thecontents of each of these applications is incorporated herein byreference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to telecommunications systems and methodsand more specifically to a high-quality voice network architecture overIP Centrex.

2. Introduction

The present invention relates to how one manages a telephone service.There are a group of well-known telephone service providers andtechnologies such as the legacy public switched telephone network(PSTN). Newer technologies are enabling telephone service via othernetworks such as the Internet, packet-switched or wireless networks. Onesuch network is referred to as a “Centrex” solution. The term Centrexrelates to a set of business solutions for voice services primarilywhere the equipment providing call control and service controloperations is owned and operated by a service provider and is thereforetypically located on a service provider's premises. There are advancesto this arrangement. Centrex frees a customer from costs andresponsibilities of owning equipment and it can be thought of as anoutsourcing solution.

There are basic functions associated with call control and service logicin maintaining a telephone network. The following functions are examplesof such services: recognizing that a party is “off hook” and that a dialtone should be provided, interpreting the dialed digits to determinewhere the call is to terminate, determining whether a party isavailable, busy, or has call forwarding, applying a busy signal,applying a call waiting tone, delivering a call to voicemail,recognizing when the called party answers the phone and when eitherparty subsequently hangs up, and so forth.

In a traditional Centrex service, such as an analog or IDSN Centrexservice, call control and call service logic reside in a class 5 switchlocated in a central office. A class 5 switch is responsible fortransporting and switching the electrical signals that carry thecaller's speech or other information.

As mentioned above, packet networks such as the Internet or other IPprotocol networks are being used now for voice transmission. Theseservices are often referred to as “IP Telephony”. In IP telephony, voiceconversations can be digitized and packetized for transmission acrossthe network. The term “IP Centrex” refers to a number of IP telephonysolutions where Centrex service is offered to a customer who transmitsits voice calls to the network as packetized streams across a broadbandaccess facility. IP Centrex builds on the traditional benefits ofCentrex by combining them with the benefits of IP telephony.

One of these IP telephony benefits is increased utilization of accesscapacity. In IP Centrex, a single broadband access facility is used tocarry the packetized voice streams for many simultaneous calls. Whencalls are not active, more bandwidth is available for high speed datasessions over the LAN, like Internet access. This is a much moreefficient use of capacity than traditional Centrex. In analog Centrex,one pair of copper wires is need to serve each analog telephone station,regardless of whether the phone has an active call; one the phone is notengaged in a call, the bandwidth capacity of those wires is unused. AnISDN BRI can support two simultaneous calls (i.e., 128 kbps), butsimilar to analog lines, an idle BRI's bandwidth capacity cannot be usedto increase the corporate LAN's interconnection speed.

In IP Centrex, one customer premises equipment (CPE) communications viathe network with another customer premises equipment (CPE) according totypically 4 digit dialing plans. For example, one person within acompany may be calling another person within the company using a 4 digitnumber. Within the CPE-to-CPE context, the network or the class 5 switchtypically negotiates a bandwidth of 64 kbps and then goes down dependingon the particular compression scheme utilized. The problem with thisapproach is that the resulting negotiated bandwidth may not provide fora quality voice signal for the communication between users. Thus,although the IP Centrex system is used, the ultimate voice conversationis not achieved with as high a quality as would be desired. The CPE maybe any phone or computing device such as a desktop computer that canoperate to enable a user to initiate a call to the network and that canperform the steps of the invention.

The reduction in sound quality over the telephone has many downsides.For example, in normal conversation, sounds or portions of words spokenmay be dropped or lost via the low bandwidth. These kinds ofdisturbances hinder the enjoyment of any conversation. In manylanguages, small sound nuances provide different meanings and any degreeof reduced sound quality reduces the capability of hearing andunderstanding the speaker.

In addition to human-human interaction, the instances of human-computerspeech interaction are also increasing. For example, people may call ahelp line for a business and engage in a human-computer dialog usingtechnology available from AT&T Corp. These speech services include aspeech server that includes modules for automatic speech recognition(ASR), language understanding, dialog analysis, and text-to-speech forcarrying on a conversation with the user using natural language. Thesecomponents are known to those of skill in the art. These systems,however, require clean speech from the user to provide accurate andacceptable ASR. With standard telephone speech, however, thelow-bandwidth speech, with dropped portions of words transmitted and lowquality sound “hear” by the ASR module of a speech recognition system,reduce the capability of the system to engage the user in a normalconversation.

What is needed in the art is an efficient and effective technology forimproving the quality of voice and other sounds transmitted over aCentrex based network.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth inthe description which follows, and in part will be obvious from thedescription, or may be learned by practice of the invention. Thefeatures and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained bymeans of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out inthe appended claims. These and other features of the present inventionwill become more fully apparent from the following description andappended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the invention asset forth herein.

The invention disclosed herein relates to a high-quality voice networkarchitecture within the context of IP Centrex. Embodiments of theinvention include a system and method for providing high bandwidthcommunication in an IP Centrex network.

The method aspect of the invention relates to a method for providinghigh quality sound communications. The method is practiced preferably bya network switch that negotiates between a first customer premisesequipment (CPE) and a second CPE, maps between a dialing plan and anetwork address, determines a network address of the first CPE and thesecond CPE and connects a call between the first CPE and the second CPE.The negotiation relates to identifying an optimal bandwidth and/orquality of communication between the first CPE and the second CPE giventhe capabilities of each CPE and the IP Centrex network. In this manner,the optimal quality can be achieved for the resulting call.

Another embodiment of the invention relates to an improved IP Centrexnetwork wherein no bandwidth limitation is imposed on a particularconnection that is utilized. There may be a voice connection or a videoor multimedia connection.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and otheradvantages and features of the invention can be obtained, a moreparticular description of the invention briefly described above will berendered by reference to specific embodiments thereof which areillustrated in the appended drawings. Understanding that these drawingsdepict only typical embodiments of the invention and are not thereforeto be considered to be limiting of its scope, the invention will bedescribed and explained with additional specificity and detail throughthe use of the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1A illustrates an example embodiment of the high quality voicenetwork architecture;

FIG. 1B illustrates another embodiment of the high quality voice networkarchitecture in the Voice over IP context;

FIG. 2 illustrates a CPE gateway with multiple interfaces;

FIG. 3 illustrates electronic loop provisional according to an aspect ofthe present invention;

FIG. 4 illustrates a method aspect of the invention; and

FIG. 5 illustrates another method aspect of the invention related to anIP Centrex network.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Various embodiments of the invention are discussed in detail below.While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understoodthat this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled inthe relevant art will recognize that other components and configurationsmay be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the invention.

The present invention provides a high-quality voice network architecturethat improves the speech and sound quality in telephone speech. Theinvention relates to methods, systems and computer-readable media forproviding a high-quality voice network. The increased bandwidth canexist over existing copper loops and hybrid fiber and coaxial lines. Theimproved bandwidth enables greater voice services over standardtelephone lines. Where the dynamic range of the signal is expandedaccording to this invention, voice recognition and TTS techniques aremore powerful. Users can hear and understand the other party better thanusing the tradition low-bandwidth approach.

The development in entertainment technologies (e.g., CD, DVD, MPEG/MP3)include 16 or 24-bit sampling at 44.1/48 kHz and higher. Thesetechnologies are becoming more advanced and utilized in the use ofmusic, multimedia and other contexts for the transmission of soundsignals. This can improve the frequency response and dynamic range ofthe transported audio channel. A sampling rate with a higher number ofbits per sample can be used to increase the potential dynamic range andexpand the frequency response and improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Seeco-pending and commonly assigned utility patent application Ser. No.09/694,210, filed on Oct. 23, 2000, the contents of which areincorporated herein by reference.

The high-quality voice network architecture (HQVNA) disclosed hereinsolves the long-felt industry need to transport a broader audio spectrumusing the existing telephone system, eliminating the problem of droppedsound in which individual letters and/or digits are lost in spoken namesor numbers during voice transmission. Dropped sound occurs because thefull voice spectrum cannot be transmitted over wires using analogtechnology. This concept provides an innovative approach to deliveringvoice services in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) byincreasing the bandwidth (and therefore the service quality) of voicecommunications.

FIG. 1A illustrates the basic system architecture 100 for the HQVNA.This architecture has the ability to provide higher bandwidth betweenCustomer Premises Equipment (CPE) endpoints 102A, 102B, 102C, equal toor greater than 64 Kbps. The CPE may be a computing device of any typeof terminal equipment such as a telephone, key system, PBX, modem, videoconferencing device, and so forth. This may also refer to connectedtelecommunications equipment (CTE). The computing device has improvedvoice codecs that compress voice utterances to CD-like quality in thecommunications network and represents a fundamental change in the audioquality of signals previously intended for the telephone local loop andPSTN. The improvement using this system is comparable to switching fromAM radio quality sound to FM quality sound. This is preferably performedby using improved voice compression codec and compression algorithms atthe CPE. For example, the higher quality voice coder may encode a singleaudio channel at 16 bits per sample with a 48 kHz sampling rate as isused with DVD-quality sound and compressed and transmitted using a 768kbps transmission rate, which is switched can be switched viaconventional circuit or packet technologies (e.g., ISDN, ATM, Ethernet,or IP). The architecture also provides for negotiation between the CPEand a softswitch or other network element so as to enable thearchitecture to take advantage of the full capabilities of the CPE aswell as providing an optimal reception, compression and transmission ofvoice signals received from a user. The optimal processing of the voicesignals based on the negotiation with the network element can be basedon the CPE capabilities, a called-party computing device capability(CPE, regular telephone, computer, cellphone, etc.), networkcapabilities or bottlenecks and so forth.

The HQVNA 100 includes the following elements: a CPE 102A, 102B or 102Cfor enhanced acoustics connected via a respective local loop 104A, 104Bor 104C or other connection to another computing device such as abroadband digital network connection (ISDN, cable, DSL, or the like)103A, 103B, 103C for communicating with the high-quality voice networkor with the local loop 104A, 104B, 104C. The CPE has means forconverting the received speech utterance from a user into a widebandsignal that is transmitted to the local loop. The local loop transmitsthe signal to the broadband digital network connection or widebandcentral office network equipment 106A, 106B, 106C which connects a userto the packet network 108A, 108B. The equipment 106A, 106B, 106C maypacketize the signals for transmission to the packet network as well asperforming many other functions.

In telecommunications, the local loop is the wiring between the centraloffice and the customer's premises demarcation point. As mentionedabove, the telephony local loop connection is typically a copper twistedpair carrying current from the central office to the customer premisesand back again. Individual local loop telephone lines are connected tothe local central office or to a remote concentrator. Local loopconnections can be used to carry a range of technologies, includinganalog voice ISDN and DSL. The term “local loop” is also sometimes usedloosely for any “last mile” connection to the customer, regardless oftechnology. As technology improves, there is a transition from the lowerbandwidth copper twisted pair to higher bandwidth means. This transitionwill take time but there is a need for wideband communications over thecopper twisted pair or other local loop media immediately.

The wideband connection equipment 106A, 106B, 106C transmits data fromthe respective CPE to a packet network 108A or 108B. The packet networkmay represent the Internet, an Ethernet network, a wireless network orsome other packet network and the like. Although the communication linkbetween the CPE and the equipment 106A, 106B, 106C is shown as the localloop, other means may also be used to communicate between these devices,for example a wideband wireless link or an alternate cable connection orother wideband connection.

Alternate embodiments do not specifically require a packet network butcan provide some other type of non-packet network. For example, a systemaccording to this aspect of the invention comprises the use of a circuitsuch as an ISDN transport as an alternate to a packet transport andswitching. This type of system may utilize time domain switching forHQVNA.

Soft switching via softswitch 110 and switch2 120 communicate with thepacket network 108A, 108B and the PSTN 124. Soft switching providesprogrammed switching to go on-net and off-net during the periods of timewhen the new technology must work with existing technology is alsoincorporated.

An “on-net” call originating and terminating within the high-qualityvoice network would flow through the architecture as follows. There is asearch for the equivalent to an “off-hook” condition at the CPE 102A,102B, 102C. Then a process is commenced to seize appropriate resources.Negotiation can proceed between the CPE 102A, 102B, 102C and the switch110, 120 in terms of what allowable resources are available. Forexample, the CPE 102A can inform the switch 110 as to the capabilitiesof the CPE 102A and then CPE 102C can inform switch 120 of itscapabilities for a negotiation using CPE 102A, CPE 102C, switch 110 andswitch 120 to arrive at an optimal arrangement for transmission of voicesignals. The issues for negotiation include, such as, withoutlimitation, what kind of quality the end device can accept, what kind ofspeaker(s) are available at the CPE, whether the CPE is capable ofreceiving or transmitting stereo or quadraphonic or 5.1 or 6.1 sound,whether other high-quality or lower-quality parameters have beensatisfied, etc. There can be mechanisms provided at the switch and atthe CPE for determining the capabilities of the originating element.

A subscription mechanism can also be provided prior to negotiation toinitially identify the capabilities of the CPE. The CPE can beassociated with authorized users and pre-identified capabilities.

Negotiation between the CPE and the switch can include authenticationmechanisms. A determination can also be made as to the type ofconnection that is being requested and to what destination usingconventional means, such as signaling of dialed digits to the switch.The switch can then proceed to negotiate bandwidth to the terminatingelement. Once the terminating element acknowledges connectivity, thecall is established and the signal proceeds through the network.

An “off-net” call originating (or terminating) within the high-qualityvoice network and terminating (or originating) within the legacylow-quality voice network would similarly flow through the architecture.Where the advanced CPE is talking to legacy CPE, it is advantageous to“downshift” the signal so that the call becomes like any regular call onthe legacy network. Alternatively, the above-mentioned switch can beresponsible for conversion of the legacy voice signal into ahigher-class signal for processing at the advanced CPE.

Where a high quality voice connection has been established, the highbandwidth call can advantageously be mapped to an existing dataconnection protocol (such as ISDN) so as to effectively use existinghardware capabilities.

The softswitch 110, 120 typically provides for call routing and callstate functions and can enable and control connectivity with the packetnetwork 108A, 108B and between the packet network and the legacy PSTN124. The softswitch includes the capability of negotiating between theCPE and the software regarding the capabilities of the CPE.

Translation between HQVNA encoding and PSTN encoding techniques areperformed by a narrow band (NB) PSTN interworking function (IWF) 122, asneeded to interwork with the portion of the PSTN limited to DS0-basedswitching and transport. Associated databases such as the DirectoryServices and Operator Services are not shown.

The interworking function enables new and different networks to interactwith the PSTN. Voice traffic can be coded in different ways in differentnetworks. For example, the GSM standard applies to a mobile network withdigital access. Voice coding in GSM gives 13 kbit/s (or half thatfigure), which must be converted into 64 kbit/s to allow switching inthe PSTN. The GSM network performs this code conversion. In ISDN, voicetraffic is usually coded in the same way as in the PSTN.

While the present invention mainly has applicability to voicecommunication, its principles will also apply to data communication. Indata traffic, different types of interconnection can be used. The PSTNsubscriber uses a modem or the like that provides a certain capacity ona line that is either dialed-up or leased. Then, dedicated Pulse-codemodulation (PCM) links interconnect the PSTN and the data network. Ifthe data network is packet-switched, as is shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B, anadapting function in the form of a packet assembly/disassembly may beinstalled at the connection point of the network. Hence, as for faxtraffic, the PSTN does not perform any adjustment for data traffic.

FIG. 1B shows architecture related to a Voice over IP context. Here, theCPE, local loop and wideband connection means connect the CPEs to packetnetworks 108A, 108B. The packet networks communicate with the PSTN via aVoice over IP (VoIP) Platform 130 which includes known features such asrouting servers 132, application server 134 and call control modules136. Each of these VoIP modules communicates with each other to manageand transmit voice communication signals received and transmitted viathe platform 130. The VoIP platform 130 communicates with the PSTN 124.In this manner, a user can use the benefits of the high quality voiceconnection via the VoIP platform to the PSTN 124.

Examples of the CPEs further include a HQVNA-capable media terminaladapter (MTA) and a cable modem in a cable access network. Any devicemay be used for different access technologies employed to provide thepacket network.

FIG. 2 illustrates an alternate embodiment of a system 200 associatedwith a CPE gateway with multiple CPEs 202, 206. This is a layer 2solution aspect of the invention. The various CPEs 202, 206 communicatewith an in-building network 204. The network 204 may be a local areanetwork (LAN) or any other kind of network utilized to connect multipleCPEs 202, 206. The network 204 communicates with a switch 208 via aconnection such as a Gigabit Ethernet connection. The switch 208communicates with the PSTN 22.

FIG. 3 provides another aspect of the invention. Electronic loopprovisioning 300 is illustrated in this figure. A telephone or CPE 302is connected via a local loop or other communication means 304 with aremote digital terminal (RDT) and voice packet processor (VPP) 306. Theoutput from that component 206 is transmitted to a packet network 108and to a packet gateway 308. The packet gateway is connected to aplurality of the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) switches 310.

There are benefits to HQVNA include increased revenue, strategicimplementation and the ability to block competitors. Customer retentionwill also increase through the use of voice telephony over atelecommunications network because of the superior HQVNA voice quality.Cell phone users may also use the HQVNA attractive for calls wherehigher bandwidth facilities are available (e.g., via a local wirelessfidelity or WiFi network). This would eliminate the problem of poorconnections, fading speech and dropped connections common to wirelesscalls. A voice over IP platform may also be used to route packetizedsignals from the packet network to either the telephone network oranother packet network.

FIG. 4 illustrates a method aspect of the invention. The methodcomprises negotiating with a network element at a computing device (suchas a customer premises equipment) voice transmission characteristics(400) and receiving speech from a user at the computing device (402).Part of the step of receiving the speech from the user comprisesdigitizing the received speech into a high quality voice signalutilizing sampling rates greater than 8000 samples per second and/orsample sizes greater than 8 bits per sample. Throughout this disclosure,any reference to speech or voice can also be interpreted as any sound.The network element may be a softswitch, another CPE, or any othernetwork node. An example includes a network node that includes thecapability of monitoring the path of a signal from the calling party tothe called party and identifying bottlenecks in bandwidth anddetermining a threshold capability for transmission and negotiating withthe CPE to instruct the CPE to receive, code, and transmit the receivedvoice to match the capabilities of the network for that particular call.

The computing device includes a microphone and means for compressingspeech into a high bandwidth signal for transmission to the local loop.The computing device also includes the means to negotiate with a networkelement, such as a softswitch or another computing device or networknode, the voice encoding speed, the compression rate and thetransmission rate of the audio signal. In this manner, the speech atwhich the voice data is received, encoded, compressed and transmittedmay conform to the capabilities of the network, called party computingdevice, any bottlenecks in the network, and so forth. The method furthercomprises converting the received speech into high bandwidth signal andtransmitting the high bandwidth signal to a telephone local loop (404)and the like. The next step is transmitting the high bandwidth signalfrom the local loop to a wideband central office node that packetizesthe high bandwidth signal for transmission to a packet network, thepacketized signal generated from the received high bandwidth speech(406). Next, a softswitch receives the packetized signal from the packetnetwork that switches between an on-network or off-network status (408).

The CPE 202, 206, shown in FIG. 2, can be implemented in a number ofdifferent embodiments. The CPE can be implemented as a customer gatewaywhich performs voice digitization and packetization and converts analogsignals into telephony packets. This is depicted abstractly in FIG. 2. Acustomer gateway 204 has a broadband connection, e.g. using a high-speedpacket interface, to a softswitch 208. The customer gateway 204 performsthe above-mentioned negotiation with the softswitch 208 and is capableof requesting variable bandwidth, depending on the device supported.

In accordance with an advantageous embodiment, the customer gateway hasa number of different interfaces on it. The customer gateway can have aregular plain old telephone service (POTS) line interface. When aconventional telephone, assume CPE 206 is a regular telephone, isattached to the POTS line interface on the customer gateway 204, thecustomer gateway requests only the 64 kbps bandwidth or less, dependingon the codec utilized. The customer gateway 204 also has a high qualityvoice interface line that, preferably, supports some “plug-and-play”capabilities. A customer would plug in a high quality telephone 202,e.g., one that supports stereo audio, and the customer gateway 204 woulddetect the capabilities of the device and utilize these parameters inits negotiations with the softswitch 208. The customer gateway should becapable of negotiating with the switch and asking for a higher qualitybandwidth.

The customer premises equipment advantageously is not limited to theconventional configuration familiar to all telephony users. Inaccordance with an embodiment of an aspect of the present invention, thetelephony handset 303 shown in FIG. 3 includes a plurality of speakerelements placed in different locations on the handset. The location ofthe speaker elements is chosen so as to be advantageous for purposes ofthe customer's auditory experience. For example, and without limitation,in one embodiment, one speaker can be positioned in the traditional“listening” portion of the handset 312 while a second speaker 314 can bepositioned on the opposing side of the handset. Alternatively, thespeakers can be positioned next to one another but provided withdirectionality that hits the inside of the customer's ear from differentpressure points.

The size and nature of each speaker element does not need to be uniform.For example, and without limitation, one of the speaker elements can actas the equivalent of a bass booster or as a sub-woofer. Differentspeaker elements, provided with enough bandwidth, can be utilized toreproduce the equivalent of 5.1 or 6.1 sound. It should be noted thatthe speaker elements provided in the handset should be of sufficientquality to enable the transmission of the high-quality voice signal,unlike the conventional construction of the speakers in a conventionalhandset.

As discussed above, the particular acoustical capabilities of thecustomer premises equipment can be negotiated between the customerpremises equipment and the network switch.

Another aspect of the invention relates to the use of an intelligentphone. The customer gateway functionality and the telephone setfunctionality can be combined into a single device, as depicted by 202in FIG. 2. Unlike IP phones, however, the present embodiment includes amore complicated digitizer and packetizer that supports more higherquality voice and more complicated forms of audio. As mentioned above,the digitizer will digitize a received voice or audio signal into a highquality voice signal utilizing a sampling rate that is at least 8000samples per second and/or sample sizes greater than 8 bits per sample.Whereas the prior art phone would connect and reserve no more than 64kbps, the present embodiment can support the reservation of higherbandwidth for increased quality and/or more audio channels, e.g. forstereo sound. The device should have a packet interface to connectdirectly to the broadband connection and should also include a mechanismfor negotiating with the softswitch 208, as discussed above.

It is preferable that the packets exchanged between the customer gateway204 or the intelligent phone 202 and the softswitch 208 be encrypted.The switch can retain a code that permits law enforcement to tap aconnection, pursuant to CALEA restriction.

Another embodiment of the invention relates to the IP Centrex context ofthe invention. The basic centrex arrangement is discussed in U.S. Pat.No. 5,247,571, incorporated herein by reference, although the '571patent does not reference the IP aspect of a centrex network. As in aconvention IP Centrex, CPE-to-CPE communications can take advantage ofshortened (such as 4 digits) dialing plans. These may be used within abusiness for employees to communicate with each other, for example.Unlike conventional IP Centrex, which typically negotiates a bandwidthor 64 kbps and then goes down to slower connection speeds depending onthe particular compression scheme utilized, and other factors that mayrelate to bandwidth bottlenecks within the network or the technicalcapabilities of the CPEs or other network elements. The presentinvention imposes no bandwidth limitations on the particularvoice/sound/video or multimedia connection utilized. The network elementsuch as a softswitch will see the dialing plan such as the 4 digit planand perform a negotiation between a first CPE and a second CPE todetermine the advanced capabilities of each CPE. The softswitch acts asan intelligent router or switch that performs a database dip todetermine a mapping between the four digit dialing plan and a networkaddress. The network address, which can be, for example, an IP addressor a MAC address where in in-building network is an 802.11 network.Based on the negotiation, the softswitch determines which is the endswitch and the network address of each of the first CPE and the secondCPE. After determining the addresses and the bandwidth necessary forconnectivity, the softswitch can then complete and effectuate the callconnection.

Another aspect of the negotiation is to identify a possible increasedquality for the call. This may involve both identifying the compression,transmission capabilities of the CPEs involved in the call as well asnetwork bottlenecks, pricing plans, modifications that may be made tothe network, and so forth to provide optimal quality for the call. Thefinal bandwidth may be further dependent on a security profile of useror the different quality of service levels based on various advancedcommunication services such as video, high-quality music, telephonyvoice, telephony video, etc. As the negotiation occurs, the system maydraw data from user subscriptions of bundles of services and levels ofservice (with associated cost increases or breaks) that can be used tonegotiate the particular quality of service. A subscriber managementserver may be used within the network to provide this information andthat may be accessible to users to alter their customer/subscriberprofile. Such a server may also provide caps on particular services.With regards to a security profile, the system may use a security codewherein the user can confirm that they really want a high quality ofservice on a subscription basis.

One or more of the CPEs may be an intelligent phone which includes adigitizer and packetizer that supports high quality voice and morecomplicated forms of audio. This embodiment can support the reservationof higher bandwidth for increased quality and/or more audio channels,e.g., for stereo sound. The intelligent phone will have a packetinterface to connect directly to a broadband connection and should alsoinclude a mechanism for negotiating with the network element, such as asoftswitch or a class V switch. The intelligent phone can be carriedabout, moved to different rooms and/or plugged into differentconnections. The network address will follow the intelligent phonearound a building as the softswitch mapping will correspond to theintelligent phone's network address. It is preferable that the packetsexchanged between the customer gateway or the intelligent phone and thesoftswitch be encrypted. The switch can retain a code that permits lawenforcement to tap a connection, pursuant to CALEA restrictions.

FIG. 5 illustrates a method aspect of this embodiment of the invention.The method is preferably practiced by a network element such as asoftswitch. The method comprises negotiating between a first customerpremises equipment (CPE) and a second CPE (502), mapping between adialing plan and a network address (504), determining a network addressof the first CPE and the second CPE (506) and connecting a call betweenthe first CPE and the second CPE (508). The negotiation analyzes thecapabilities of the CPEs on either end of the call and networkbottlenecks to identify an optimal bandwidth (and thus quality ofservice) for the call. The network element also performs a database dipto determine the mapping between the dialing plan and a network address.The network address may be the address of one or both of the CPEsassociated with the call.

Embodiments within the scope of the present invention may also includecomputer-readable media for carrying or having computer-executableinstructions or data structures stored thereon. Such computer-readablemedia can be any available media that can be accessed by a generalpurpose or special purpose computer. By way of example, and notlimitation, such computer-readable media can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM,CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or othermagnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to carryor store desired program code means in the form of computer-executableinstructions or data structures. When information is transferred orprovided over a network or another communications connection (eitherhardwired, wireless, or combination thereof) to a computer, the computerproperly views the connection as a computer-readable medium. Thus, anysuch connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium.Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope ofthe computer-readable media.

Computer-executable instructions include, for example, instructions anddata which cause a general purpose computer, special purpose computer,or special purpose processing device to perform a certain function orgroup of functions. Computer-executable instructions also includeprogram modules that are executed by computers in stand-alone or networkenvironments. Generally, program modules include routines, programs,objects, components, and data structures, etc. that perform particulartasks or implement particular abstract data types. Computer-executableinstructions, associated data structures, and program modules representexamples of the program code means for executing steps of the methodsdisclosed herein. The particular sequence of such executableinstructions or associated data structures represents examples ofcorresponding acts for implementing the functions described in suchsteps.

Those of skill in the art will appreciate that other embodiments of theinvention may be practiced in network computing environments with manytypes of computer system configurations, including personal computers,hand-held devices, multi-processor systems, microprocessor-based orprogrammable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframecomputers, and the like. Embodiments may also be practiced indistributed computing environments where tasks are performed by localand remote processing devices that are linked (either by hardwiredlinks, wireless links, or by a combination thereof) through acommunications network. In a distributed computing environment, programmodules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.

Although the above description may contain specific details, they shouldnot be construed as limiting the claims in any way. Other configurationsof the described embodiments of the invention are part of the scope ofthis invention. For example, the system may include a voice over IPcomponent, an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) component or be used onan Ethernet network. All or a portion of the high bandwidth signal mayalso be transmitted via a wireless medium via a number of knownprotocols. As another example, while the specification details theinvention in terms of receiving a voice signal at a computing device,the voice signal being digitized and processed, it the present inventionis not limited to voice signals. Any sound may be received at acomputing device and processed according to the principles of theinvention. Therefore, any location where voice or a digitized voicesignal is referenced, it may be assumed that any sound may be processedin the same manner within the scope of the invention. Further, thecentrex or IP Centrex network may also be a wireless network or otherPBX-related network that includes an IP component. Accordingly, theappended claims and their legal equivalents should only define theinvention, rather than any specific examples given.

1. A system for providing high quality sound communications within an IPCentrex network, the system comprising: a processor; means forcontrolling the processor to retrieve a security profile including asecurity code confirming a quality of service; means for controlling theprocessor to negotiate between a first customer premises equipment (CPE)and a second CPE, the negotiation being related to a possible quality ofa call between the first CPE and the second CPE and based in part oncapabilities of the first CPE and the second CPE; means for controllingthe processor to map between a dialing plan and a network address; meansfor controlling the processor to determine the network address of thefirst CPE and the second CPE; and means for controlling the processor toconnect the call between the first CPE and the second CPE according tothe negotiated quality of the call and the dialing plan mapping, whereinat least one of the first CPE and the second CPE is an intelligent phoneand further comprises: means for digitizing sound received at theintelligent phone; means for packetizing a received signal; and means tonegotiate with the IP Centrex to connect to the network at rates morethan 64 kbps.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein the means forcontrolling the processor to negotiate further comprises means forcontrolling the processor to determine the capabilities of the first CPEand the second CPE.
 3. The system of claim 2, wherein the connected callbetween the first CPE and the second CPE is more than 64 kbps.
 4. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein at least one of the first CPE and the secondCPE is an intelligent phone.
 5. The system of claim 1, wherein thesystem is a switch within a communications network.
 6. The system ofclaim 1, wherein the network address is an IP address.
 7. The system ofclaim 1, wherein the network address is a MAC address.
 8. Acomputer-implemented method for providing high quality soundcommunications, the method comprising, from a network switch: retrievinga security profile including a security code confirming a quality ofservice; negotiating between a first customer premises equipment (CPE)and a second CPE, the negotiation related to a possible quality of acall between the first CPE and the second CPE and based in part oncapabilities of the first CPE and the second CPE; mapping between adialing plan and a network address; determining a network address of thefirst CPE and the second CPE; and connecting the call at more than 64kbps between the first CPE and the second CPE according to thenegotiated quality of the call and the dialing plan mapping, wherein atleast one of the first CPE and the second CPE is an intelligent phoneand further comprises: means for digitizing sound received at theintelligent phone; means for packetizing a received signal; and means tonegotiate with the IP Centrex to connect to the network at rates morethan 64 kbps.
 9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, whereinnegotiating between the first CPE and the second CPE further comprisesdetermining the capabilities of the first CPE and the second CPE. 10.The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein at least one of thefirst CPE and the second CPE is an intelligent phone.
 11. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the network address isan IP address.
 12. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, whereinthe network address is a MAC address.
 13. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 8, wherein negotiating between the first CPE and thesecond CPE further comprises identifying subscriber data that affectsthe quality of the call.
 14. The computer-implemented method of claim 8,wherein a user can provide a security code associated with a desiredquality of service.
 15. The computer-implemented method of claim 8,wherein the security profile of at least one user affects the negotiatedquality of the call.